Andrea Yates verdict - huh?

[--Pete]

Hi,

I am not looking to cure her. I am looking for justice.

So, you are driving down the road one day, you have a stroke. You hit a school bus, kill thirty kids, but you survive. And your idea of 'justice' is to ignore anything other than the fact that you've killed thirty people. You get the needle and we all sing hosannas. That attitude is out of date by at least a hundred and fifty years. Just because mental problems don't bleed doesn't mean they are not real. And note, my attitude leaves her as dead as yours, but not from some primitive (and, in the third millennium, ignorant) desire for retribution. I save retribution for people who knew what they are doing.

Justice? Would you punish people born defective for their defects? If you say yes, you are irrational. If you say no, then why do you distinguish between the mind and the body? The person with the broken mind is no more to blame for that breakage than is the person with the broken body. It is not society's place to punish a person for their physical or mental deficiencies. Indeed, if society has any responsibility in the matter at all, it is to aid those people. Only when a person becomes a threat to society should there be negative intervention, and that must be without passion or hatred. Much like having to shoot your dog, it is done because it is necessary.

--Pete